


Flowers for Walburga

by Librasmile (Tenthsun)



Series: Sins of the Fathers [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, One Shot, Redemption, Short One Shot, Young Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10833828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenthsun/pseuds/Librasmile
Summary: The road to redemption begins with the smallest steps – even for Death Eater Severus Snape…





	Flowers for Walburga

**Author's Note:**

> _I wrote this little gem three years ago and somehow forgot it existed. I stumbled across it just today and was stunned to see that I had finished it. I re-read it and thought “Well this doesn’t quite suck.” So I gave it a bit of a spit and polish and now am positing it._

The Dark Lord respected pureblood traditions, which is why Severus was willing to risk that the gesture wouldn’t get him killed.

No one was allowed to mourn for Regulus – officially. But that didn’t mean one couldn’t – discreetly – commiserate with the mother on her presumed loss. For Regulus _was_ surely lost. There could be no other excuse for his absence at required meetings, the lack of his presence at certain social functions. Regulus was a – an admittedly young – man of regular habits, no pun on his name intended. As the appointed heir of the Black legacy – appointed in the wake of his older brother Sirius’ unforgiveable blood treason – Regulus had to be seen as loyal and resolutely dependable. Hence, he’d attended every meeting, danced eager attendance upon the Dark Lord’s every whim. And of course NO ONE defied the Dark Lord’s summons. So his disappearance could mean only one thing.

He was dead – or as good as. He would not be seen ever again except by those unfortunate enough to come to share his fate.

In other circumstances, concern would have been voiced, alarms raised, investigations started and a body sought. That of course did not happen. What did happen was a steady if circumspect stream of visitors to Grimmauld Place.

So Severus brings Walburga flowers.

He does it himself.

He does it to express sympathy for Walburga’s loss.

He does it in defiance of the Dark Lord.

He does it because Regulus was his friend.

He does it because of the look in the eyes of a child who believed in him long before Albus Dumbledore did.

He does it because his heart is changing. He cannot live this black life anymore.

He is risking his life with this one small gesture.

He could have sent his foster brother Simon Fache. Simon would have done this for him, risk his neck though it might, because Simon is loyal to him. All the Faches are. And because of that loyalty he cannot ask Simon to do this. Simon was waiting for him to ask but he would not do it. Simon resents this. But Severus doesn’t care. The Dark Lord thinks of the Faches as little more than house elves, in fact worth less than house elves (although worth more than muggles and mudbloods of course). And while the Dark Lord would have no compunction about killing a house elf or anything lower (or anything higher for that matter), the Faches are known to the Death Eaters as Severus’ menial servants.

So, he cannot leave this task to Simon. This task _matters_. And he does not want anyone to think he would use the Faches for anything that _matters_.  They are to be kept in reserve until his estate is restored and they can officially resume their positions within his restored household. Until then he wants them to be invisible to his fellow Death Eaters. They are to count as nothing. Wall paper. Convenient appliances. Nothing more. …If they were anything more, they would become target practice.

So he stands on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, his hands all but crushing the bunched stems of a hand-picked gathering of rhododendron and thrift blossoms – artfully arranged to obscure the marigolds and white poppies within – the only color enlivening the midnight mourning of his black robes. Officially he is here for tea. Officially he’d passed a flower shop and thought to bring his hostess a gift. Officially the flowers came from an anonymous flower seller in Diagon Alley. In reality they came from the select greenhouse of Mint Alley, specially grown to give those who breathe their scent a lasting peace – at least temporarily.

Walburga never screams. She never cries or wails.  She never breathes a word against the Dark Lord. She never stops to question Regulus’ absence. She carries on, accepts the flowers, hands them to the house elves and shows Severus to tea. He is a half-blood but a respectful half-blood with excellent manners and all the right opinions. The Dark Lord thinks very highly of him. So she does him the honor of pretending he is her equal. He shows the good judgment of never pushing the pretense beyond tolerable boundaries.

At the darkest hour of the night, she will walk down to the family crypt, the stone vault in the bowels beneath the house, and lay the flowers beneath the plaque of Regulus’ ancestral namesake.

Earlier in the twilight of the same night, Severus will go to the Chapel of St. Arthur-in-the-Round. It belongs to the Adorants, the only wizard denomination that never questions the visitation of dark wizards. With no more sound than a shadow, he will make his way to the vestibule, conjure a flame with his wand and light a candle in Regulus’ memory.

He will remember the last time he saw Regulus, when they were all together in the library at Adders Grove, him, Regulus and the Grove’s Lord and Keeper Orpheus Broomall, enjoying the thrilling camaraderie of intellectual equals, set free from boundaries of blood and breeding. And he’ll remember that underneath his laughter he’d been hurting, stung from yet another sighting of Lily – Potter now, not Evans, never Evans again and certainly never Snape – on James Potter’s arm. He’ll remember swallowing down the terror of learning who the Dark Lord had decided the prophecy had marked as his enemy. And he’ll remember thinking of Lily’s looming death, that boy’s death, as his eye fell upon Orpheus’ daughter, only just entered primary school. She was their mascot, their perpetually forgiven interloper, swinging her little legs from the depths of her father’s great chair, with a book bigger than she was open in her lap – a book only half read as she drank in every word, every argument, every theory they spouted. He’ll remember looking up to see her eyes shining with open faith and adoration. She was not looking at Orpheus. Nor at Regulus.

He had wanted to vomit.

He had wanted to run blindly from the room and throw  himself under the nearest dung heap and never brave the light again.

He had wanted to snatch the child, hunt down Amelia Broomall, fling the girl into her mother’s arms and scream at her to take her child far, far away where no one had ever heard of the Dark Lord.

He had wanted to cry.

And that was the last night he’d seen Regulus alive.

Then there was silence. A roaring, deafening silence that pounded beneath the feet of every Death Eater dancing attendance upon their Dark Lord. An insistent silence that pounded beneath the beat of every rousing speech the Dark Lord gave them. And all the while the unspoken questions whispered into the silence.

_Where was Regulus? Where was the Black heir? Where was the Slytherin Prince?_

Of course, no one spoke those questions aloud. No one dared.

And so he brought flowers for Walburga and lit a candle at the Adorant Church and walked to Sutt Hill Alley where he commissioned the post that would take the anonymous note that held his confession and plea for absolution to the one person on this earth who could give it – the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

**~*Fin*~**

**Author's Note:**

>  **Flower Guide** (Taken from “The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols,” by Adele Nozedar):  
>  **White Poppies** – Consolation – every mother – no matter how bigoted – deserves consolation for the loss of a child  
>  **Marigolds** – Cruelty and Grief (also Jealousy) – The Dark Lord is cruel and so must have been Regulus’ death, as for the jealousy I cannot say what if anything it may mean to Severus…  
>  **Thrift** – Sympathy – Regulus was his friend; he shares Walburga’s pain  
>  **Rhododendron** – “Danger, beware I am dangerous”: because it would be dangerous to acknowledge there was anything to mourn…
> 
>  **Author’s Notes:** _Okay I know not much happens in this story. I wrote it for several reasons. First, I don’t believe that finding out the Dark Lord targeted Lily was the sole reason Severus turned against the Dark Lord. I think Severus was on the path to turning away awhile before this. There was a build up and he was undecided and too afraid to do it. Then the threat to Lily became one of the pushes he needed to do what he had wanted to do all along. Regulus' death became the second. Second, if you check my page you’ll see I have a number of unfinished WIPs. That’s because I keep finding I need to lay down some backstory before I can complete the original story. The Price of My Familiar started out as backstory and it’s been well received, so hey it can’t be all bad. Third, I’ve been struggling for a way to introduce Simon Fache and his family for a long time. He plays a pivotal role in Confessions of a Cornwall Grad in chapters yet to be written but it felt too difficult to just throw him out there. Although I seem to have done just that in this little one shot. Oh well, live and learn. Fourth, don’t despair over my languishing WIPs. I haven’t given up on them. But I have to break them down into little steps before I can properly tackle them again. Consider this story one of my little steps =^)_
> 
>  **P.S.** _You really should keep an eye out for my one shots. I scatter bits and pieces of background story here and there. You may also see appearances by characters from the WIPs. Oh and about those feral house elves. They are Hanag and Ranag. They were the house elves attached to Severus dispossessed estate of Ravens Wake. And if you don't know what Ravens Wake is, I suggest you take a look at one of my other stories, Confessions of a Cornwall Grad. It'll tell you ALL about it..._
> 
>  
> 
> _As for the Chapel of St. Arthur-in-the-Round, well it falls under the jurisdiction of the Church of the Magi (Ecclesia Magi) also known as the Adorants. They make distinctions between Dark Magic and BLACK Magic, ergo, not all Dark Magic is automatically BLACK Magic. It's complicated and NO it doesn't mean they're evil. It means they don't automatically equate Dark Wizards with BAD Wizards. Because after all, the Creator made the night sky dark, does that automatically mean it is bad? Should we hold the night responsible for how some bad people use it? So now you know why Severus feels safe going to this chapel._  
> 


End file.
